Practice this on a piece of same sized copier paper first to get the idea of what you need to achieve. As you can see from the first pic, the net comes as a neat piece of material, This is where that ends, first it is rolled and screwed up into a tight ball and rolled about in your hands for a couple of minutes. The idea is that you break up the thread of the material which makes it more pliable. Then gently unroll the material but do not flatten it out, check around the edges and gently pull apart any sections that are still flat, so that you have what appears in pic three. Then when you are happy it is onto the next part of abuse - pin the net to a piece of card or foam board with drawing pins, just enough to hold it from flying off. I then mixed up a colour to try to match the average colour from all of the pics of Leopards in this cam scheme that I have, and when satisfied I thinned it down to about water consistency, the idea is to dye the fabric and not paint it. Once one side is done and dry, turn it over and do the other side, then undo two of the pins and hang the board so that the fabric is hanging.

Hi Greg, Thanks for the idea, stowage has yet to be decided. But as for the Defmodel set, all you get now is as pictured and you have to furnish the rod yourself. Which could be either plastic rod or aluminum/brass tube. Again for strength I would go for the metal tube. And thanks for the kind comments, much appreciated.

I started by cutting a piece of the netting to a rough shape for the mantlet and thought I would try this out on the scrap Meng part before attempting to destroy the work already done. The adhesive of choice came down to wood glue in the end, this would give me time to re-work the netting and not be an instant grab! The first piece went on as advertised, BUT, it was flat to the surface and looked nothing like the photos of the real thing. A second layer on top of the first after about ½ hour gave me the look I was after and any areas that looked a bit ‘wrong’ had small pieces added. These are torn rather than cut with scissors or knife which blends better than a straight edge which will stick out like a sore thumb. And if I may say so myself, it does look the part and any adjustments were made using rubber tipped artists tools and one tool I made myself from old watch parts, to be used as an edge roller.

And so it was on to another part of the turret and a repeat process and I found that allowing it to dry overnight allowed it to be handled without any real damage. I tried to work from the centre out so that there was not a lot of handling of work already done. All other parts were covered as I went along and here you can see the netting completed as far as fitting goes.

The turret will now be put aside until the hull has been completed, then there is a brown camouflage pattern to spray on and assembly of the Hull slat armour. And this is where we are today, so I will close now and report back on site next week. Cheers. Mike.

Some truly epic work has gone on here Mike- I did wonder why you bothered to paint it first, given how thoroughly you've blanketed and netted it since! The Barracuda camouflage looks superb though, so time well-spent.

Alistair, The paint - I had thought that the base colour of the Magic Sculpt being white when dry would show up through the netting and that would be wrong. Not realising at the time that I would need to add a second covering. But it also sealed the M/Sculpt ready for the wood glue, which were discoveries I found along the way, so a bit more knowledge to fill the gray matter between the ears....

I have since learned that the lines on the matting are actually where the material is sewn and also where between the lines is where the Barracuda is sewn as in VVVVVVVV this idea. So on the next one, there is a 2A6M CAN running amok in my stash I will try a different approach and may just get away with using less netting. But I will keep it as is for this build.

Many thanks for the kind comments, they are very welcome, I will try to get more done this week once I have finished my shed door inner lining ready for the winter rains (and stop reading others blogs).